[What Hardware Does What? - Upgrading your Hardware for Vectorworks]

I have come back to this post a lot.  It has helped tremendously. I appreciate the information on minimum recommendations.  I would be interested in knowing when enough is enough though?  I am looking at workstations lately fearing that I might need to replace my current machine that is having some hiccups (got a great deal on a refurb, but I think it is starting to show its age.) 

• The post talks about 6 and 8 core CPUs, but there are threadrippers with 64 cores.  Is this overkill or a godsend?  I model in shaded mode, but present in realistic customs (would move to redshift if displacement mapping, grass and caustics were supported.)
• Same thing with GPUs.  There are a host of GPUs with higher specs than the 6gb  recommendation.  I am currently not seeing any slowdown on my GPU navigating in Shaded, but if I were to start using Redshift (if more features are implemented) is there any benefit to having loads of vram?  Or is clearing the threshold  the important thing and anything extra is just... extra?  Is anything beyond 12gb just an ego trip and a cash vacuum?

 

Granted, I am digging deeper into some other software now that will also influence my decisions.  I am starting to use Blender more, and of course Illustrator and Photoshop-- sometimes having all of them open at the same time.  But any recommendations of how much is too much would be beneficial. I want to find enough of a workstation to future proof myself for a little while, but I also don't want to saddle myself with a machine that I need to keep forever because I paid too much chasing specs that don't matter. 

 

Also, where do other operations happen, i.e. deform, stitch/trim surfaces, extrude along path, conversion to nurbs or solids, etc.

[Vectorworks 2023 Service Pack 6 Available for Download]

On 7/20/2023 at 7:51 AM, Kevin C said:

Anuyone had failures in updating to SP6? It corrupted our VW and we had to roll back to SP5

It did a similar thing to what happened when I updated to SP5. Progress bar got to 100%, then went past 100% and took away from the left side of the progress bar but only a few percent this time rather than 140%.  Then it showed an error, and when I tried to run the update again it said I was up-to-date and already had SP6.  Will let you know if I see anything glitchy once I get to use it again.

[Redshift - FAQ]

Redshift appears to support displacement mapping outside of Vectorworks.  Is this functionality expected to be implemented in future releases?